de Young Museum

Camille Pissarro had a unique and lifelong interest in the human figure. From his earliest years in the Caribbean and Venezuela until his death in Paris in 1903, Pissarro drew, painted, and made prints featuring human subjects from every walk of life, which outnumber the figural works of his colleagues Monet and Sisley. Pissarro’s People celebrates the painter’s humanism in all its aspects and brings together nearly 100 works of art, including some 37 paintings and numerous works on paper made over the course of his entire career.

Pissarro’s People was organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. It is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The Grand Patron is Jeannik Méquet Littlefield. Education Sponsors are Denise Littlefield Sobel, Wells Fargo, and the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. Sponsors are Nan and Ransom Cook, Raj and Helen Desai, and Charles and Ann Johnson. The catalogue is published with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment for Publications.

Grand Patron

Jeannik Méquet Littlefield

Education Sponsors

S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation
Denise Littlefield Sobel
Wells Fargo

Sponsors

Dr. N. L. Ascher
Nan and Ransom Cook
Charles and Ann Johnson

The catalogue is published with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment for Publications.

One of the finest collections of 17th-century Dutch Old Masters belongs not to a museum, but to Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, who have been called “the most important collectors you’ve never heard of.” Masterworks from this collection are constantly sought-after for American and international exhibitions. The selection of paintings includes premier examples of quintessentially Dutch subjects—from portraits and still lifes to landscapes and charming scenes of everyday life.

The flowering of popular culture during Japan's Edo period (1600–1868) brought about a revolution in Japanese publishing and the art of the book. With prosperity and the spread of literacy, particularly among the merchant class, a great variety of reading material developed, including illustrated books of poetry, legends and folk-tales, romances, and travel guides.

Renowned Bay Area artist Rupert Garcia is committed to creating artwork not only as a means of achieving aesthetic ends, but also as a viable way of addressing social and political concerns. Through his bold silkscreens and layered pastels and paintings, Garcia catalyzes discussion and debate in a broad audience about the pressing issues that have faced the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His recent editions elaborate on his political concerns, as well as addressing his interest in challenging notions of folk and high art.

The Magna Carta (or Great Charter of English Liberties), one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy, is on display at the Legion of Honor May 7–June 5. The document is presented in Gallery 3 under a Spanish ceiling dating from approximately 1500. The Magna Carta coming to San Francisco belongs to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, and is one of four surviving manuscripts from the revised 1217 issue.

First unearthed in 1996 in a rescue excavation in Lod, ancient Diospolis, Israel, this large and extraordinarily detailed mosaic floor has only recently been carefully removed from its site and conserved. Found in a large villa believed to belong to a wealthy Roman, the excellently preserved mosaic floor dates to about AD 300. Two rectangular end panels flank a large square medallion. The medallion and one of the end panels contain depictions of delightful animals and exotic beasts.

Arthur Szyk (American, b. Poland, 1894–1951) is best remembered for his diverse work as an artist and illustrator, from pochoir illustrations for traditional Jewish and Polish folktales and religious texts to watercolor designs for political cartoons that were regularly featured on the cover of Collier’s magazine throughout the 1930s and '40s. Szyk’s Polish and Jewish heritage remained central, and his attention to detail betrayed considerable historical research into his craft.

Noted photographer Arthur Tress (b. 1940) began collecting Japanese books in the fall of 1965 when he was a student at the Zen study center associated with the Shōkoku-ji temple in Kyoto. “After classes I would wander the back alleys behind the school, and I accidentally came upon a small, dilapidated secondhand bookstore that was filled from floor to ceiling with thousands of ragged old Japanese books for only a few dollars each,” he recalls. “I was enchanted by the lovely, soft paper and bold illustrations [that were] often by important ukiyo-e artists such as Utamaro and Hokusai.